Steph's Trip To Japan
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27 July 2004
Whee! This day was one of my favorites! We walked along the rocky beach,
under an arch, and found tidal pools! They were really cool, full of urchins and
fish and hermit crabs and sea snails. We collected from a 100 cm square area
(a dryish area) and brought our samples back. After some processing, we
realized that there were about a bazillion little mussels, the black/purple kind,
and half as many hermit crabs. I got lucky—I got mostly mussels, but a handful
of sea snails. These snails would occasionally do a jail break sort of thing, and
we’d find them attached to a book or the sink. After lunch, we identified our
critters. We did this all day. Then we had supper. After that, my memory became
rather fuzzy and I couldn’t figure out where everyone had gone. I felt really
stupid when I realized that we were working on a PowerPoint in the lab, not in
our rooms. Oh well.
Some of us visited the aquarium at night. I’m sure it was pretty neat, but I was
busy with the PowerPoint we were to present the next morning. The Seto
Aquarium had at least two electron microscopes in it…which was so cool. I
think some time during this day we were led on a tour behind the scenes, where
all the tanks and replacement fish were. We looked down on sharks from only a
few feet away. It was pretty cool! I just wish I could remember which day it was.
At dinner, it was Greg ‘s (a middle school kid) birthday, so we all got ice cream
with dinner. I got a bitty scoop, but it was better than any vanilla ice cream I’ve
ever had in my life.
28 July 2004
11:00 am sharp we all presented our data to the Former Minister of Education
and a ton of Japanese bigwigs. It was really scary, standing in front of such
powerful men and giving a presentation we’d spent 4 hours on the night before.
Dr. Akito Arima, the Former Minister, really liked our presentations, and gave a
long speech in English and Japanese.
After this was accomplished, we packed up all our things and went to a hotel, the
Kawakyu, for lunch. This hotel is actually a huge castle-like building, which most
thought was very beautiful. I thought it was very gaudy and tacky, as if 4 or 5
highly paid artists smushed their masterpieces together. They had tall marble
columns, blue in color, that contrasted to the dark cherry wood furniture, the
grey marble tables, and the marble/porcelain floor mosaic (brown and blue). It
had purple chandeliers, a gold leaf ceiling, and a modern stainless steel
staircase leading up to traditional wooden Japanese rooms. Each room was
1000$ a night. Gag. Mr. H stayed here for only 100$.
Anyway, the lunch was grand, and each table was a mix of every group—middle
school, high school, university, and up at each table. It was amazing to talk to
some of the people, and I apparently sat next to one of the most important
people there. He looked American, and introduced himself. I shook his hand and
made him laugh. The lunch was fancy European style, with only a little bit of food
on each plate, but a lot of courses and presentation.
We left for the giant underground mall/train station, where I skipped part of lunch
when someone was smoking and ended up buying a Dir en grey CD, my first CD
on the trip. I was ecstatic.
From there we went Tanabe to visit Tanabe High School, our sister school. My
friend Nanae was waiting outside for me, and I shook her hand for the first time.
She was very nice, and a very wonderful person. The teachers led us around
school to a class where a group of students sat at long tables with sinks taking
up the middle of the table. Like: |||||::||||| where the colons are the big sink.
Students 2nd grade and up presented for us, trying their best to speak English
while they pointed at power points. They were so cute! But very shy. They
wouldn’t ask me any questions, so I had to ask them some (with Nanae helpfully
translating). After a while we were informed that we were going to the river to do
water quality testing, so we went back to the school entrance and changed out
of our guest slippers.
I thought this was goodbye, but it fortunately wasn’t—Nanae said Hirohata-
sensei said she could come with. I thought this was great, and then she hit me
with another surprise—she had a bag full of gifts for me. Most of it was
Japanese junk food, which I ate some of. My favorite was something like a rice
crispies bar, but without marshmallows, and dipped in chocolate. She also gave
me “french fries” in a bag, some pizza flavored chips, and some reeeaaally bitter
Japanese curly things. The coolest thing was she gave me a purse with a
square bottom—and it is beautiful.
From the school we drove up the mountains to a river. Everyone was quite
interested in taking samples, so I simply filmed them most of the time without
knowing what was going on. And Kiyono and I had issues when I asked him
whether Australia was mostly “dusty” or “full of plants”. I must have asked him
this ten times, and each time he looked at me and said “Wh-what?” I made sure
he knew the words I was using, and of course he did. He’s an English teacher
after all, haha! He asked Nanae my question, and they talked in Japanese about
it for a while, undoubtably saying “What did she ask?”, before asking me
“What?” again. In a bright burst of understanding, Kiyono suddenly says “Both!”,
and I let the conversation drop after a hearty laugh. Most of us were getting
eaten by giant mosquitoes the size of my thumb, so we had to go. Just kidding
about the size, not about getting eaten. We headed back to the hotel, and I told
Nanae goodbye and went upstairs to freshen up before we went out for dinner.
Nanae was waiting there in the lobby when I finally came down.We talked about
a lot of things, and quite a lot about her cell phone. Did you know, Japanese
people get a new cellphone every year? It’s part of some weird plan they have.
But her cell phone took pictures at digital camera quality, so she took a picture
of us in the lobby. Unfortunately, I don’t have it. Sorry all.
From there we went to the mall plaza sort of thing in the inner city. Nanae walked
me around through a CD store, where I bought a hide CD. “King of Psyborg
Rock Star”. I also looked through the oldies CDs, but couldn’t find anything I
wanted. They have Avril Lavigne over there, as well as Hoobastank and some
other pop CDs. “Bump of Chicken” is very popular over there right now.
We looked through a bookstore, but I didn’t recognize any books, not even ones
I already had at home, so we didn’t buy anything there. I nearly bought a
magazine, too. After this we went into an electronics store to get Nanae a
webcam and a microphone so she could speak to me more often. I was
surprised she had that much cash on her—it was around 100$ set!
After this we met back with our groups and looked around the area for dinner.
There were a couple of traditional restraunts, as well as one casual café, so we
chose the last one. We fit all six teens in this one booth, and as we waited,
Nanae translated fortunes that the other guys had bought from a machine sitting
on the table. I had ordered at hot dog, which is kinda weird in Japan, but the
place had it. When I looked, I saw that they had put lettuce under the dog. Cool,
I thought. I took a bite, and found out why they had put it there—they were trying
to kill me with egg salad. What egg salad was doing on my hot dog, I don’t know,
but my mouth tasted pretty bad after that. Luckily, the last thing we decided to
do before we went back to the hotel was to stop at a Baskin Robbins. I bought a
“brownie sundae”, because I didn’t get my sundae at the café, for 600 yen. This
is a lot of money…twice what it is here. However, two scoops of ice cream was
300 yen, and three scoops was….300 yen! They were having a special, and I’m
stupid! =D But I had some of Alex’s ice cream—she got vanilla. I told you guys
that vanilla ice cream in Japan is a thousand times better than it is over here,
right? Soft cream (what they call soft serve ice cream) isn’t as good, as it’s full of
air.
Back to the hotel, and it was really goodbye for Nanae—she had to work late
and wouldn’t see me again. I promised to email her that night, and I did, on the
personal computer in my room. I opened my new cd and saw that it came with a
special dvd, so I stuck that into the side of the computer. Amazingly enough, this
computer played it. I get the feeling that, if I had been able to read the
instructions on the computer, I could have messed with the room temperature
from the computer (but they had an A/C remote, so I did that anyway.). After a
bit of crying over the DVD, I wrote a few emails and went to bed.
